


Climb

by nightbloomingcereus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Pining, Post-Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens), post-not apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-27 08:56:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingcereus/pseuds/nightbloomingcereus
Summary: Sometimes Crowley felt like he’d always been climbing, slowly upward, one burning step at a time.Primarily an elaboration on the church scene in 1941, and the aftermath, with a coda post-not apocalypse.





	Climb

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "Climb," by Tori Amos.

_Climb over the church wall, he said_  
_You can feed the koi in the pond_  
_Climb over the church wall in your Sunday dress_  
_Be sure to feed the koi in the pond_  
_It's a long, long climb going back in time_  


-Tori Amos, “Climb”

Sometimes Crowley felt like he’d always been climbing, slowly upward, one burning step at a time. Even when he hadn’t even had _feet_ yet, there he was, slithering upward to the top of the garden wall, to stand beside the angel, who radiated a white light. He could have flown, he realized later, or even just snapped his fingers and appeared at the top, but he couldn’t help but think that if he hadn’t made the climb the hard way, the angel wouldn’t have lifted a wing to shelter him when the first fat drops of rain began to fall. He certainly wouldn’t have told him about giving away his flaming sword. 

But it was always one step up, two steps down. Climb a tree, reach for the shiniest apple, and fall right out, with nothing but a bruised ego to show for it. Two steps up, one step down, and right back into hell[1]. Going down, as it turned out, was easy, whether one was Falling or merely sauntering, but climbing upward took effort. 

***

**1941**

He couldn’t touch the church gates despite willing it with every atom of his soul. Attempting to use his powers to fling them open without touching them had been singularly ineffective and had only served to physically throw him backwards with a jolt, like the opposing poles of two magnets. He couldn’t even get close. Whatever priest had consecrated them had apparently believed with every atom of _his_ soul that the gates to this church were a literal representation of the gates of heaven, and some things, it seemed, were too holy to break even in the face of all the wanting in all six thousand years of the world. 

He ended up slithering over the back wall in snake form[2], much as he had slithered up the walls of Eden millennia ago, and dropping unceremoniously into a small garden on the other side. He shifted back to human, and looked around. London was dark in a way it hadn’t been for nearly a century, thanks to the wartime blackouts, and the garden was lit only by the moon overhead, round and very full. Small droplets of water splashed on his hand, and the latent reptilian[3] part of his brain, panicked, thinking it might be holy. He threw himself to the ground away from the source of the splashing, before he realized that his hand was in fact not turning to ash. As it turned out, it was just ordinary water, dripping from a small ornamental spigot into a shallow pond. Glinting, sinuous shapes – koi, said the part of him that remembered the Garden, full of living things – moved slowly, dreamlike, under the surface of the water, rippling through the moon’s watery face. For a moment he forgot where he was, and thought fondly that he should like to feed them with Aziraphale, in much the same way as they fed the ducks in St. James Park. 

Thinking of Aziraphale, however, suddenly brought back into singular, panicky focus why he was here at all. He became aware of a dull tingling in the soles of his feet, a sort of staticky buzzing that he could feel in his bones. A veil of cloud drifted over the face of the moon, rendering the koi in the pond nothing more than silent, drifting shadows. He stood up, brushed the dust off his trousers, righted his hat (_I hope you’re happy, Angel, nothing but my Sunday best for this impromptu trip to church,_ he thought sardonically), and headed toward the main church building, where he could hear the low murmur of voices.

Thank _somebody_, the doors to the actual church stood open, so there was no repeat of the incident at the outer gate. He climbed the six steps up to the entrance, the tingling in his feet increasing in intensity with each one until it was less _static_ and more _daggers_. Around the fourth step, the tenor of the voices coming from within the church suddenly changed. He heard Aziraphale’s voice specifically, a rising note of panic at the end. The pain in his feet lessened. Something in his chest stuttered. He jumped over the fifth step and landed on the threshold of the church. 

_Consecrated ground_. The daggers had become _walking on hot coals_, and the frequency of the buzzing in his bones amplified; he thought he might shatter like crystal if it got any higher. In the flickering candlelight ahead of him, he saw Aziraphale, a gun pointed directly at his heart. He danced his way down the aisle, already reaching out with his mind to redirect the nearest bomber. 

***

“Little demonic miracle of my own.”

The look Aziraphale gave Crowley, his eyes widening, when he produced the satchel of perfectly unharmed books was like the sun breaking through the clouds after that first storm above the walls of Eden. It was unguarded, and still too fragile, something that couldn’t yet be said aloud but that nonetheless hung in the air, suffused with the otherworldly quiet that only comes with settling dust and in the aftermath of true miracles, great or small[4]. Neither of them had stopped time, but it felt like time had stopped nonetheless. The touch of their hands combined with that look as he handed the satchel over sent a shock of electricity through Crowley. Not the static vibrations of consecrated ground, nor the daggers still piercing his feet, but a humming sort of electricity nevertheless. 

An air raid siren blared in the distance, and just like that, the moment was over. He turned away, quickly, because he did not want to see Aziraphale’s eyes shutter and lock that look away forever.

A short time later, he pulled the Bentley up in front of the bookshop. They hadn’t spoken on the way from the ruined church, Aziraphale’s hands nervously clutching the handle of the satchel, and Crowley’s gripping tightly to the circle of the steering wheel. The pain in his feet had subsided, rather quickly in fact upon leaving the church grounds, but he could still feel the tingling in his hand. Overhead, the clouds drifted apart, spilling moonlight over the short step up to the entrance of the shop. 

Aziraphale opened the car door. Outside it was quiet. He turned toward Crowley, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. His eyes were hooded, dark in the shadows of the car. Finally he said, “Well, good night then. Thanks for the lift, I suppose. And for … the books.” 

“Don’t… don’t make a habit of it, Angel,” stuttered Crowley. 

He watched as Aziraphale climbed out of the car, clutching the satchel in both hands, stepped up to the bookshop door, and unlocked the door the human way, turning a heavy key in the lock. Aziraphale stopped just inside the door and lit a single candle. He followed the spot of wavering candlelight as the angel made his way through the bookshop and watched it reappear in the windows of the flat above. Aziraphale rarely used the flat, he knew, preferring to while away the nighttime hours with a book and a cup of tea in the cozy back room of the shop. Crowley himself had never seen it, never been invited up, even though he had spent more than one night sprawled out on the couch in the back room. He wondered what it was that had spurred the angel to climb the rickety stairs at the back of the shop tonight. He wondered if he’d ever see that look in the angel’s eyes again. For all that he hid his own demonic eyes behind dark sunglasses, he thought the angel far better at hiding his soul behind his eyes.

When he reached his building, he miracled himself straight up to his flat, without waiting for the lift or, heaven or hell forbid, climbing the stairs. He slept, and dreamed of other dimensions, other worlds, where Aziraphale gazed at him openly with that look in his eyes and he looked back, their two souls laid bare beneath the moonlight.

***

**2018**

Perhaps it was finally being free of the constraints of heaven and hell. Perhaps it was that they had worn each other’s skins, literally walked in each other’s shoes[5]. Perhaps it was that he had finally made it all the way back to heaven, albeit in chains, and had found it wanting. Whatever it was, he was no longer afraid that he would climb to a great height, look down, and fall twice as far.

They drove back to the bookshop after their celebratory dinner at the Ritz, where they had lingered for hours as the summer sky slowly darkened into night. Moonlight spilled over the doorstep just as it had in 1941, and this time, Aziraphale invited him in, wordlessly extending a hand and pulling him through the shop and toward the back. They climbed the creaky stairs hand in hand. At the top of the stairs, lit by a thin shaft of moonlight coming through a high window, Aziraphale stopped, turned to look at him, and there – _there_ – was that look again, that look that he’d been chasing since that night in the ruined church. Aziraphale reached out and lifted the sunglasses from his face, and he knew his own eyes wore the twin to that look. He had never been so sure of anything in his life. For a long moment, they gazed at each other, and then Aziraphale leaned forward to brush their lips together. 

Some time later, they climbed another set of stairs, this time up to the roof. He looked upward, to where the moon hung huge and bright in the night sky, and he looked downward to the quiet nighttime streets of SoHo, and he was finally, finally, home.

* * *

[1] And sometimes it was more like one step up, and then down a long slippery, chute into hell.  
For that matter, it is debatable whether heaven or hell is responsible for Chutes and Ladders. Despite the fact that the original name of the game is “Snakes and Ladders,” it was most emphatically NOT Crowley’s doing.  [return to text ]

[2] Although some snakes can in fact climb certain types of walls, Crowley as a snake was able to climb walls mostly because he believed he should be able to, and so he could.  [return to text]

[3] Quite literally. [return to text]

[4] In the morning, the first responders would find that the koi in the pond in the garden had all miraculously survived the bomb that had leveled the church. Aziraphale, reading about this in the papers the following day, realized that he hadn’t even known the church had a koi pond. [return to text]

[5] or, well, “shoes” in Crowley’s case. [return to text]

**Author's Note:**

> [ Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ziclohx_BA) is the whole Tori song. You should listen to it, it's amazing. 
> 
> I haven't written fanfic in at least 15 years. Hope I still got it. Comments, kudos, suggestions, etc are all most welcome. <3


End file.
